CHIRP

It has been discovered that there have been at least 2 memory layout changes in recent Baofeng UV-82 (and similar) radio models. Neither time was the firmware version that gets reported to CHIRP updated/changed leaving CHIRP with no useful way in detecting which version is which.

These memory layout changes were discovered when UV-82HP radios in-the-field were being reported as exhibiting the side affect of either not being able to scan or not being able to transmit after being programmed with CHIRP. Investigation of the issue indicated that in all cases the affected radio had been programmed with CHIRP Radio Images (*.img) file that was obtained from one of the other variants with a different memory layout. Once this was understood, a comparison of the "images" from the 3 variations was made to see if it was possible to determine exactly what portions of memory were incompatible. It was. There are 3 places.

Currently when the firmware version of the "image" file exactly matches the firmware version within the radio it is being uploaded to, the complete "image" is transferred into the radio. Unfortunately this overwrite these areas with incompatible data which results in the undesirable side affects described above.

The driver for these radios is already programmed to skip past these known troublesome memory locations when uploading an "image" to a radio that does not have a matching firmware version. This driver needs to be modified so that these areas of memory are always skipped regardless of the source and destination firmware versions.

Jim KC9HI